Negative Sample Enhanced Object Detection Machine

A non-transitory computer readable storage medium tangibly embodying a computer readable program code having computer readable instructions that, when executed, causes a computing device to carry out a method of detecting abnormalities captured in a medical image, the method comprising:

• receiving a medical image having one or more lesions and one or more interferences;
• applying one or more convolution layers to the medical image to create one or more feature maps, respectively;
• applying a region proposal network (RPN) to each of the one or more feature maps to create a bounding box around each lesion and interference;
• for each bounding box, classifying an object in the bounding box as a lesion, an interference, or a background;
• and
• storing each object that is incorrectly classified as a lesion but determined to be an interference, as a hard-negative example to be part of a training set for a subsequent application of the RPN.

A computer implemented method, comprising:

• receiving a medical image having one or more lesions and one or more interferences;
• applying one or more convolution layers to the medical image to create one or more feature maps, respectively;
• applying a region proposal network (RPN) to each of the one or more feature maps to create a bounding box around each lesion and interference;
• for each bounding box, classifying an object in the bounding box as a lesion, an interference, or a background;
• and
• storing each object that is incorrectly classified as a lesion but determined to be an interference, as a hard-negative example to be part of a training set for a subsequent application of the RPN.